This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects of art, which may be related to various aspects of the present invention that are described and claimed below. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present invention. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statements are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.
As most people are aware, the modern business climate can be extremely competitive. In order to thrive in this competitive global market place, companies generally need to be able to recognize and react to trends and changes in both their markets and their customers. For example, it may be advantageous to recognize profitability trends in certain market sectors or certain customer types. However, the global market place is also increasingly complex, and it may be difficult to recognize trends amongst the tens of thousands or more data items that make up a modern commercial data set (e.g., sales records).
One conventional technique for recognizing trends or other information in a large data set is with charts. Charts may enable relatively large amounts of data to be displayed relatively efficiently, allowing trends or other features of the data to be identified. However, only those features of the data set which are displayed in the chart benefit from these advantages. Early charts, such as simple bar charts, were only able to display highly aggregated data (e.g., total sales volume, total sales amount, and so-forth). Later charts, such as, conventional stacked bar charts, advantageously enabled display of volumetric sub-divisions within the aggregated data. However, conventional stacked bar charts are still not able to display value distinctions.
A system and method for creating an improved graphic display of complete data would be desirable.